Blacklands Read online

  He thought first of Dunkery Beacon, where all his fantasies centered, before spreading like bony tendrils across the rounded hills. From there he would almost be able to identify the individual gravesites—not from prurient newsprint graphics but from actual memory, the memory that had sustained him throughout his imprisonment and which still held the power to feed his nighttime fantasies. The thought alone brought saliva to his mouth, and he swallowed audibly.

  Dartmoor was very different. This moor was grey—made hard and unyielding by the granite which bulged under its surface and frequently broke through the Earth’s thin skin to poke bleakly up at the lowering sky.

  The prison itself was an extension of the stone—grey, blank, ugly.

  There was little heather on Dartmoor, just prickled gorse and sheep-shorn yellow grass. There was no gentle beauty and purple haze.

  Dartmoor was not Exmoor, but Avery would still have liked to watch the seasons change from his narrow window.

  But his window had been blocked on the orders of his prison psychiatrist, Dr. Leaver, who theorized that even visual contact with the moors would be counterproductive to his attempts to purify Arnold Avery’s psyche.

  Avery’s bile rose in his throat along with the hatred and fury he now reserved exclusively for Dr. Leaver and Officer Finlay.

  It amazed him that Leaver couldn’t understand that this was Dartmoor, and so held nothing but a passing aesthetic interest for him. The fact that both were moors was apparently sufficient reason for Leaver—a cadaverous man in his fifties—to decree the blocking of the window, which left Avery depressed and mopey, even in the summer months.

  The terrible catch-22 he faced was that Leaver was half right. While he was mistaken in thinking that Avery gave inordinate weight to the moor he might have seen from his window, Avery would only have been able to convince him of that fact by revealing the truly awesome weight he gave any idea, sight, or mention of Dartmoor’s smaller, prettier, more gentle cousin on the north coast of the peninsula.

  If Leaver—or anyone else—had had any idea that merely hearing someone say the word “Exmoor” could give him a daylong erection, his paltry privileges would have been suspended faster than Guy Fawkes from a rope.

  Avery had never killed an adult but he knew he could kill Dr. Leaver. The man’s monstrous ego was fed by the power he held over the inmates he counselled. Avery was not empathetic, but he recognized his own sense of superiority in Leaver within five minutes of settling in for their first session together. It was like glimpsing his own reflection in a mirror.

  He knew that Leaver was clever. He knew that Leaver liked to show off how clever he was—especially in an environment where he had every right to feel that way. After all, any con who was smarter than Leaver had, at the very least, to concede that they’d fucked up badly enough to get caught.

  Avery had no problem with Leaver flaunting his intellect. A man who had a talent should use it; a footballer played football, a juggler juggled, a clever man outwitted others. It was Darwinian.

  In Leaver’s presence, Avery was a bright man who had flashes of intellectual connection that made him a cut above the run-of-the-mill burglar cum barroom brawler. Clever enough to interest Leaver but never clever enough to alert him or threaten his ego.

  He asked Leaver’s advice and always deferred to Leaver’s decisions, even if they had an adverse effect on him. The boarding up of his window was a case in point. When Leaver had suggested it might help, Avery had suppressed the urge to tear the man’s throat out with his teeth and had instead pursed his lips and nodded slowly, as if he were examining the idea from every conceivable angle, but with the best of intentions. Then he’d sighed to show that it was a regrettable necessity—but a necessity nonetheless.

  Leaver had smiled and made a note that Arnold Avery knew would bring him closer to the real life waiting for him outside these walls.

  The benches were another step on the freedom ladder. But the benches were enjoyable to make. And had the immense added attraction of the nameplates …

  Avery stroked the wood under his dry hands and reached for a shiny brass plate with a screw hole in each corner.

  “Can I have a screwdriver please, Officer?”

  Andy Ralph eyed him suspiciously—like he hadn’t used a screwdriver a thousand times before without running amok—then handed Avery the Phillips-head screwdriver.

  “Flathead please, Mr. Ralph.”

  Ralph took back the Phillips and gave him the flathead, even more suspiciously.

  Avery ignored him. Idiot.

  He looked down at the plate in his hand and smiled as he remembered the scene of what had been—until SL’s letters—the greatest power trip since his incarceration …

  “I hear you’re building benches, Arnold.”

  “Yes, Dr. Leaver.”

  “How do you enjoy that?”

  “Good. I like it. It’s very satisfying.”

  “Good. Good.” Leaver nodded sagely as if he were personally responsible for Avery’s upped satisfaction quotient.

  “Thing is …, ” started Avery, then stopped and licked his lips nervously.

  “What?” said Leaver, suddenly interested.

  “I was thinking.”

  “Yes?”

  Avery shifted in his seat and cracked his knuckles—the picture of a man struggling with a great dilemma. Leaver gazed at him calmly. He had all the time in the world.

  “I was thinking …” Now Avery dropped his voice so it was almost a whisper, and looked down at his own scuffed black shoes as he continued haltingly. “I was thinking maybe I could put a little brass plaque on my benches. Not the shitty one I made first, but some of the other ones. The good ones.”

  “Yes?”

  Avery scraped a match under his fingernails, even though they were already clean.

  “With names on.”

  His voice disappeared in the whisper and he dared not look at Leaver, who now leaned forward in his seat (to give the illusion that he was part of a conspiracy—Avery knew the moves).

  “Names?”

  “The … names …”

  Avery could only nod mutely, staring at his lap—and hope that Leaver was even now imagining that tears filled the killer’s eyes—and that he had cottoned on to what he was trying to say.

  Leaver slowly straightened up again, clicking the top of his Parker pen.

  Avery wiped his sleeve across his bowed face, knowing it would add to the illusion of a man in personal hell, and Leaver fell for it, hook, line, and psycho-sinker.

  The fucking moron.

  Avery screwed the brass plate to his best bench yet and stood back to admire his work.

  IN MEMORY OF LUKE DEWBERRY, AGED 10.

  Oh, his benches were his ticket out of here all right. But they were also tickets to previously unimagined pleasure while he was still stuck in this grimy hellhole.

  Now his benches graced the yard and walkways that already evidenced the work of other prisoners, with their foolproof flowerbeds and neat verges. And every time he was allowed out for exercise, Avery made a beeline for one of them.

  Other prisoners made benches. Other prisoners now started to put little plaques on them, most with the names of their children or lovers or mothers.

  But Avery had no interest in sitting on other benches. He luxuriated against the plaque IN MEMORY OF MILLY LEWIS-CRUPP; he pressed JOHN ELLIOT, AGED 7 with a thumb he’d rubbed dirty just for the occasion; and, on one memorable afternoon, he rubbed himself discreetly against the back of a bench while staring at the brass words:

  IN MEMORY OF LOUISE LEVERETT.

  And while he did, a large part of him savoured the delicious irony. He was way too smart to show Leaver just how clever he really was.

  Or how angry.

  Or how desperate to hear from SL.

  Despite his newfound control and patience, Avery could not help wondering whether he’d done the right thing in not replying to SL’s last demanding missive.
r />   For the first two weeks after he’d received the bald “WP?” he’d enjoyed knowing that SL was waiting for something that he, Arnold Avery, wasn’t going to give him. That had been satisfying and empowering, and Avery had been energized by the experience.

  The next two weeks had been more difficult. While his self-satisfaction continued to some degree, he also missed anticipating SL’s reply to any letter he might have sent. He had to keep reminding himself that he was doing the right thing. But his resolve was tested and he started to wonder if SL had given up. People had no staying power, he worried. Avery had staying power, but he was exceptional. SL had been impatient, so maybe he had also been angry or frustrated or just tired of the sport. The thought that SL might not realize that he was now required to make a concession to appease Avery scared him.

  SL’s first communication had heralded the most interesting four months of Avery’s entire incarceration, and he was loath for it to end. Every missive had been a reminder of his heyday, and everyone likes to be reminded of their finest hour, he reasoned.

  Week five of Avery’s unilateral moratorium brought despondency. SL was tough. Avery lay awake at nights and worried. He resented it bitterly; his nights had become oases of pleasure since SL’s first letter had allowed him to reexamine his memories in fresh detail in a way he’d thought was long gone. But now he lay awake, unable to recapture those baser feelings and fretting instead over practicalities like the unreliability of the postal system, or the thought that SL might have concocted the correspondence as a kind of sick hoax to bring about the very punishment he was now experiencing.

  It was this last thought that finally raised the anger in Avery that kept him strong. Anger was an emotion he had rarely given in to since his arrest. Avery knew that anger was counterproductive to life inside, which required resignation above all else.

  Resignation had been his constant companion for years, with his anger at Finlay or Leaver never being allowed to break the surface, although he could feel it boiling in his guts whenever he saw either of them.

  Now, in the pitch-black cell which did not even shed the light of a half-full moon on his darkness, Avery mentally added SL to his short but heartfelt list of fury, and resolved that his erstwhile correspondent would get nothing from him—not a word, not a symbol, not a carefully folded piece of Avery’s shit-stained toilet paper—until he’d said sorry.

  It was five weeks and four days since SL’s last letter before Avery received the next one.

  There was no map, no initials, no question marks, just the single word:

  Avery grinned. It had more grudge than grovel about it, but it would do. SL had learned the lesson and had realized that he was not in control in this game, and that Avery should therefore be accorded due deference. With that single word he had acknowledged Avery’s power.

  Now Avery sat and wondered how best to wield it.

  Chapter 18

  IF ARNOLD AVERY HAD REALIZED HOW STEVEN HAD STRUGGLED to write that single word, he would have been more appreciative of it.

  Once he’d recognized that he’d offended and needed to make peace, Steven had written a dozen letters and posted none. They ranged from a rambling litany of the reasons he was so desperate for knowledge, through a sycophantic plea for guidance, to an angry rant at the callousness of the distant prisoner.

  So it had gone on. A roller coaster of emotions that lasted for weeks and left Steven’s mind sick with pleading and dizzy with anger. In short, he had found it a lot harder to swallow what little pride he had than he’d thought he would.

  Finally—going with the brevity that had brought him the genius of “Sincerely”—he simply wrote “Sorry,” hoping that Avery would read into it whatever underlying motivation would best serve Steven’s purpose. He could do no less, but he was not prepared to do more.

  Another week passed, during which Lewis claimed that Chantelle Cox had a crush on him.

  It was not the first time Lewis had been convinced of the power of his own sexual attraction. Last summer Lewis had casually told him Melanie Spark had let him touch her tit. Steven had been stunned and it was only his careful and insistent probing that revealed that it had been through a cardigan and a blouse, and had really been more of a rib, and that fickle Melanie had immediately elbowed Lewis in the throat for it. When Steven hesitantly suggested that—just maybe—Melanie Spark hadn’t been an active participant in the tit-touching episode, Lewis had merely grinned at him pityingly and revealed that women always changed their minds about sex; that it was what they were known for.

  But apparently Chantelle Cox had not changed her mind; at least Lewis had no fresh bruises to indicate that she might have.

  “Lalo and me were the snipers and she ran round the back of the shed and I went after her—”

  “Where was Lalo?”

  “He was too scared. Last time he chased her round there she hit him with the hose. But I went round cos I knew Dad had used the hose to wash the car yesterday and it was out front. And she was just standing there, so I shot her, but she wouldn’t fall down cos of that muck, you know?”

  Steven knew. He’d died into the muck round the back of Lewis’s shed a few times.

  “So I says, ‘If you don’t fall down, I’m taking you prisoner,’ so she says, ‘Okay, then,’ so I put her arms behind her and tied them with my jumper, right?”

  Steven nodded. He’d also been tied with Lewis’s jumper on a number of occasions. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t hard to get out of.

  “And then she kissed me, right on the lips.”

  “She kissed you?”

  “She kissed me.”

  “With tongues?”

  “Tongues?” Lewis looked puzzled.

  “Yeah,” said Steven. “Did she put her tongue in your mouth?”

  A look of revulsion flashed across Lewis’s face. “That’s disgusting!”

  Steven flushed. Somewhere he’d heard that that was what girls did, but now—flustered by Lewis’s instant disapproval—he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it and whether the source was reputable. His natural deference to Lewis in all things worldly was an integral part of their friendship and now he felt that not only had he stepped out of line but he’d stepped out of line into a bog, and he needed to turn around fast and get back onto solid ground.

  He shrugged and looked apologetic. Lewis scowled at him.

  “Did you touch her tit too?” Steven thought that handing Lewis the opportunity to brag would be his path back to terra firma, and he wasn’t wrong.

  Lewis looked glazed for a moment and then nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, both of them. At the same time. I got a stiffie and everything.”

  Steven knew it was a lie. Not all of it. He was sure Chantelle Cox had kissed—or been kissed by—Lewis. But he could always tell when Lewis left his own path and strayed haphazardly and inexpertly into the minefield of lies. A tiny, shifty look in his eyes preceded any such deviation, as if his inner eye were scanning the horizon for the possible pitfalls of his imminent dishonesty. Steven always let it go. It was like the good half of a sandwich. What was the point in arguing?

  And besides, he thought with a sudden rush of unfamiliar maturity, just last week he’d apologized to a real-life serial killer; allowing Lewis his imaginary stiffie behind the garden shed seemed paltry by comparison.

  Plus, kissing Chantelle Cox was something to boast about. She wasn’t that pretty, and she was a tomboy, but she definitely had little breasts, although she never teased boys with them the way Alison Lovacott did. Apparently. Steven had heard that Alison Lovacott had flashed her boobs to John Cubby in the lunch queue. He could hardly believe it, but if it had happened to anybody it would have happened to John Cubby, who captained the Under-16s soccer team and was plainly the best-looking boy in the school.

  This reminded Steven that it was John Cubby he’d overheard about the tongues and that it was therefore almost certain to be true. Too late now—he’d already backed down over that. The
thought of Chantelle Cox putting her tongue in his mouth didn’t disgust him, though. In fact, the idea sent a little shiver through him that was not at all unpleasant. He blushed. Maybe he was not normal. Not normal the way that Arnold Avery was not normal. He frowned, disturbed by the thought, and wished it had never entered his head.

  “What’s with you?” Lewis was staring at him quizzically.

  “Nothing,” he knee-jerked, and looked up to see they were almost at Lewis’s house.

  They said good-bye and Steven walked on to his house alone.

  He smiled at Nan in the window but she just pursed her lips at him as if he’d done something wrong just by walking home from school.

  Davey had spread every toy he owned in the hallway behind the front door. Something cracked under Steven’s foot as he entered and he looked down to see a broken pink jack. He kicked it skittering towards the skirting board.

  “Steven?”

  His mother’s voice sounded strained and Steven stood motionless, wondering whether he could still back out of the front door without her knowing he’d ever been in.

  “He’s just come in.” Nan’s voice was sly.

  Steven couldn’t keep the wariness out of his voice: “What?”

  “Could you come in here please?”

  He looked up to see that Nan had come to the door of the front room to enjoy his heavy walk to the guillotine of the kitchen.

  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table holding a letter from Arnold Avery.

  Steven felt his bladder clench in terror and almost doubled over as he barely managed to stop himself pissing down his legs. It was the Lego space station all over again.

  Lettie looked at him coldly.

  “You got a letter.”

  He couldn’t find words. Couldn’t remember how to find words. He felt the back of his neck prickle and burn. His life was over.

  Lettie looked down at the letter and cleared her throat.

  “A photo would be nice,” she read.

  “A photo! Disgusting!” Nan was standing behind him. Now she pushed him aside so she could cross to Lettie, and tried to take the letter from her hands. Lettie kept it from her.